ok.

meanderings and ramblings follow. brief ultimate anecdote at end.

shaq is running a fitness show. "better not fart on me" he says as he's holding a kid's ankles for situps.
tim duncan is a machine. it's amazing to see him work. the combination of quick decision making on secondary breaks, hustle on the run (after the slowed plantars duncan of past years), and this calculating assasination in the post as he assesses the passing lanes, the double... sometimes the quick move, but usually see whats there, and then a devastating scoring move... the spurs are sick.

so is lebron, but unfortunately, his team mates look like they are trying out for the generals, or whoever it is that used to play the globe trotters...

pretty good weekend. yesterday, a 40 minute run (run to the store to get a new i pod shuffle, picked up some pot stickers and yogurt at the grocery store on the way home, tried to carry the bag in the safe, tiki barber position), then a 1 hour mt. bike ride...

today, 2.5 hour ride, nice and easy, although there was one 20 minute climb (technically, it was a 1hr20 min climb, but only 20 min was steep enough to get hard)... then i ate lunch, watched the repeat of USAvsGuatemala in the Gold cup, then ran 1000's. I was kind of dissapointed. This was the 'long' 1000 grass course, i.e., on the 'short' course i'm 30-45 seconds faster per thousand, but the head coach claims they're both 1km. I don't think so, but we'll see.. I ran there, 1 mile at 7:30, then went 4, 4, 4 (even), then ran home. Last fall on that course, i went, 4:15, 4:06, 4:00, 4:00, but the blog says i was sick, so i'm moderately OK with today, but then i rolled my ankle on the run home, so that's a bummer. Hopefully minor. My ankles don't swell anymore, but it could hurt from 0 days to some weeks. i'ts a little achy right now. We'll see. I'll skip the run tommorrow, but I was planning on running 800's on tuesday. I'll see how it feels. If it still hurts, i'll do bike intervals instead, or just a long easy run on trail.

Tommorrow, I'll do some biking, road if it's warm, mt. bike if it's cold or windy. If my ankle is inconsequential, 800's tues, rest wednesday (w/ like 20-30 min bike), duathlon thursday, rest friday, city league tourney saturday, Long ride sunday, bike mon, 2-4-6-8-6-4-2 ladder tues, wed lite ride, thursday duathlon, fri rest, sat/sun solstice... last week and this week are non frisbee for me, but i'll try to get in some throwing. I've got to find out which kid has my discs and cones, so i can at least take a stack of 30 discs over to the park to throw.

3.5 days of teaching left. But who's counting. After that, it's immediately M/W/F runs with the team, starting w/ 40 min, T/Th low key summer ultimate all at 8:30. I'll be doing early morning MTB rides w/ a ski training buddy a couple times per week before practice, and i'll do afternoon roller ski or biking. after solstice, july is supposed to be all base training for running, any intervals will be bike or the duathlons, and in august i'll go back to running intervals, and skip the bike intervals. July is supposed to be 60 - 80 hours of low intensity, high volume.

Why do i do this? I'm not that fast. I'm not that good at anything. I did do the 'multiple stage 20 m shuttle run' with a PE class friday. According to the chart, it says I have a good V02 max, and i was up with the top 5 of 100 kids, but, who knows... even so it hasn't yet panned out to anything other than being skinny-ish, and being able to tolerate a high training volume. So why the effort? I guess to make goals. I want to go sub 18 in a 5k this year, sub 17 next year. In 10 km ski racing (which is REALLY dependent on conditions), I want to ski around 28 this winter which will demand excellence dedication and dilligence in training quality, quantity, diet, and luck. Never count out luck. I figure I got this Masters season, and maybe next summer, and then it's coaching only and playing only for fun, and focusing entirely on skiing, and off season multi sport gigs to stay sharp for skiing (that was the plan for this year, until frisbee reared it's head).

i ski'd like 120 days this year: 100 skate or classic, 20 days hiking to ski. There were also a couple days of riding the chairlifts after ski days, and at least 18 days where i ski'd in the morning, and then ski'd again in the PM, but just as i would count one ski run as a ski day, 2 skis per day is still one day.

I've averaged a minimum of 8-20 hours per week of training over the past year (15-20 in the summer, down to 8 in the winter on weeks when i was driving, 15 for most of the spring). So like800 hours (guess) training for the year, which has not made me much faster, but has kept me at least as fast running as peak XC, and greatly improved ski times. mainly it's served as a nice ritalin replacement... which, when i was 22, my prescription ran out, and i just... sort of... forgot to go get more...

stay tuned. my pals were at poultry days this weekend. i hope they won. our team has never won in an odd year, despite winning in every even year from 2000 on... i was at two of them...

A story from that... I had a swollen knee after getting clobbered by I THINK paul greff's brother (does he have a brother?). A clean fair hit, i made a defensive play, he made the offensive play, and got it, and landed on me. This either caused a bursus injury, or beat up on my PCL which would finally go sometime later (a ligament you don't really need, often)... anyway, i wrap a tensor bandage around the knee, thanks tina, and kept playing...

late in the semis, i'm point in a zone, and we've got them pinned, and the 6" wide bandage unwinds until i'm trailing 4 feet of bandage... people are yelling do you want an equipment timeout... i yelled 'g-dammit, there is no such thing as an equipment timeout. ' then i caught the 'd', and threw the goal.

that was kind of funny.

i read on the wilmington website that they require players to read the rules. genius. it's so irritating to see people taking 'equipment' timeouts to tie shoes, etc. that said, I actually think it's totally kosher, if you and your mark are OK with it, to just stop cutting for a sec to tie your shoes while in the stack... but that's just sportsmanship. if they aren't OK with it, deal with it... and the new technical time out doesn't include calling a technical timeout after you've turned it over and the other team is walking it up... i think it would probably be OK to do (not by the letter of the law though) when YOU are walking it up... your team garners no advantage at that point...